For whatever reason, the popular women’s interest website Jezebel enjoys taking shots at Olivia Munn. They complained about Munn when her book came out. Then in their ” The Daily Show is sexist” diatribe she came up again. Ladies, its not a conspiracy. Sure you went out and found some disgruntled ex-employees of The Daily Show who were female– BFD!
Its a basic cable show in a sea of bad television that’s had a phenomenal 14 year run in its transformation from obscure show hosted by Craig Kiborn to Emmy winning chat show with global leaders. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I’m sure if the Jezebel staff wanted to, they could find disgruntled male employees too.
Olivia Munn
But back to Munn. Jezebel seems to take issue with the fact that Munn was recently hired, by The Daily Show:
Munn was hired after an exhaustive search for a female correspondent that included many professional comedians. Executive producer Rory Albanese told the Daily Beast that producers were previously unaware of Olivia’s drooling fanboy base: “We’re stuck in a hard news cycle and we’re nerdy. If she was on the cover of The Economist, we would have been like, ‘Yes! Of course!’” It’s hard not to conclude that looks mattered more for women than for men.
So? Its television not National Public Radio. And its not a real news program. Just because FOX News and MSNBC have turned journalism in this country into a bad partisan joke doesn’t mean that The Daily Show needs to be held to higher standards. Have you seen the leg show put on the women of FOX News? I’m waiting for Glenn Beck to tell me that women who wear skits below the knees are communists who don’t love America.
The Daily Show is subject to all the pressures of a regular basic cable show. That means they need ratings to sell advertising. So yes the producers went out and got some eye candy. If the producers were worried about the writing they would have paid a king’s ransom for Tina Fey, but they wanted to give the show some youth appeal. Keep in mind that Jon Stewart turns 48 this year.
And its not like Attack of the Show, where Munn was putting on a French maid costume for sweeps. I think I’ve seen her do a total of three segments in her first month. She’s a Daily Show “contributor”, they didn’t give her the hosting gig. She got the job because her star is on the rise: with cameos in Iron Man II, Date Night, music videos, and a role on an NBC sitcom this Fall –she’s the new “It” girl.
And yet Jezebel complains that, “Munn comes off as a potty-mouthed provocateur whose appeal seems targeted to what she thinks men want.” So?
Most people that are over the age of 30, understand that Olivia Munn is just the flavor of the week. She’s not witty like Tina Fey. She doesn’t have the timing of an Ellen DeGeneres or the comedic insight of the young Roseanne Barr. Olivia Munn’s toolbox is small– she uses her looks to make people laugh. And for Generation Y, a pretty girl jumping into pies and eating phallic shaped foods is funny. I don’t mind, because she’s easy on the eyes. But the thinly veiled protest over at Jezebel.com– you’d think that the world was coming to an end.
Sarah Silverman
And we know that Munn’s schtick isn’t original, she the latest in a series of comediennes to trade on their looks: Lucille Ball, Goldie Hawn, Aisha Tyler, Sarah Silverman and so on. To be honest we have a real dearth of young female comedians on TV. Amy Sedaris is 49. Tina Fey is 40. Sarah Silverman is 39. I won’t even talk about the current crop of women on SNL. They’re not funny. I can’t tell if its them or if its the writing. Its a shame considering how many funny women have been on SNL over its thirty plus year history (Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Sweeney, Molly Shannon).
So to the columnists over at Jezebel– give the girl a break already. Olivia Munn has parlayed her early success on basic cable into great success. So give her a hand and stop giving her the finger.
Follow Sarcastic Bite on Twitter 
Ok its not just me… Emily Gould over at Slate.com thinks Jezebel’s staff is full of it too.
Gould writes:
It’s a prime example of the feminist blogosphere’s tendency to tap into the market force of what I’ve come to think of as “outrage world”—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate’s own XX Factor and Salon’s Broadsheet.
They’re ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business. But they promote the exact opposite of progressive thought and rational discourse, and the comment wars they elicit almost inevitably devolve into didactic one-upsmanship and faux-feminist cliché.
The vibe is less sisterhood-is-powerful than middle-school clique in-fight, with anyone who dares to step outside of chalk-drawn lines delimiting what’s “empowering” and “anti-feminist” inevitably getting flamed and shamed to bits. Paradoxically, in the midst of all the deeply felt concern about women’s sexual and professional freedom to look and be however they want, it’s considered de rigueur to criticize anyone, like Munn, who dares to seem to want to sexually attract men.
It’s because she isn’t funny